Too Good To Check

How journalists create myths and legends, not least about themselves.

Hello, city desk, get me rewrite. Here's the lead: Many of the landmark moments in American journalism are carefully nurtured myths—or, worse, outright fabrications.

William Randolph Hearst never said, "You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war." Orson Welles's "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast didn't panic America. Ed Murrow's "See It Now" TV show didn't destroy Sen. Joseph McCarthy. JFK didn't talk the New York Times into spiking its scoop on the Bay of Pigs invasion. Far from...